The Heterodyne Girl
by Khilari
Summary: Co-written with Persephone Kore. Sequel to "Agatha's Bad Plan", "Making Better Plans", and "Plans for Mechanicsburg". Agatha tried to save Passholdt, which brought her continued survival to the Baron's attention. Now the Heterodyne Girl and the Empire are back in contact, and Otilia is compelled to act.


The Heterodyne Girl is back.

You knew she would be, even when they found her burnt corpse, even when you stayed outside the laboratory containing it (once the school was empty, once you once again had no other duties but _her_). Death hadn't stopped her before (not once her mother pulled you away, stopped you guarding the grave, you knew you needed to be there but you didn't realise not being there meant she could come _back_). And now she is here, again, near your boy (not your King, not this time, but your boy and you think this might be worse). He brings her into the school, into your domain, and gives her rooms there. He's so glad to see her alive again and you would kill her if you could.

You talk to him, in his laboratory, watching the floating bodies of her caretakers (he should not have saved them when they saved her) while he regards the panels before him, half distracted and only half listening. 'She's dangerous. She will use you to gain power.' The words are heavy, blunt, but incomplete. You will not resort to the abstracts you were made for that did so little to make your Master listen. You cannot tell the whole truth.

'Of course she's dangerous. She's brilliant,' he says, which is true but misses the point terribly. He sounds admiring.

You hiss, soft frustration between your teeth. A mannerism that goes with this body (with breathing) like the lips drawn back from your fangs and the carefully curling hands (you do not make fists, you only seek pain when there is a new kind to learn and endure, and it is a long time since you would accidentally drive claws through your palms). 'Not as a Spark. As a person. She does not need machinery to destroy.'

He snorts. 'Of course not, she has Jägers,' he says, not at all as if he's taking you seriously, then shakes his head. 'No, I know, Father's worried she'll win over everyone aboard she's allowed to talk to. She's very easy to like. But, you know, there is actually a good reason for that.'

'Because she tries to be. Because you don't want to see the truth.' But he really doesn't want to see it, and he won't, no matter what you say.

'Madame Von Pinn-' He leans forward, intent, and adjusts something. Fine streams of bubbles rise up through the tanks, and he sits back and finally looks at you, earnest. For a second you almost let yourself hope. Then he says, as gently as you ever taught him (which means with steel underneath, always), 'She isn't her mother.'

'No,' you say, and it's terrible because he won't understand why it's terrible. 'She's herself.'

He looks baffled by the agreement, then sighs and looks back at the indicator lights. (You don't remember anything so complicated - or wet - but then, you didn't see this body until it was already finished.) 'You don't really need to worry about me,' he says. He's trying to make it sound like a joke, but it wouldn't be funny even if there were no regret under it, and you have heard him pretend to be carefree before. 'I tried asking her to marry me and she doesn't want to.'

You think of peace treaties and marriage as the lynchpin, plans that might not be exactly the same as two centuries ago, things she has to gain, now and later. You want to claw her for turning him down, for not loving him when she _should_, and you want to be relieved the way he thinks you should be. If she ever does marry him it won't be for love. 'Don't ask her again.'

'You could give her a chance, you know. She really _is_ nice. If we'd known about her she'd probably have been at the school all along.' He stands up and stretches, then suddenly leans in and kisses your cheek. He's the only one past the age of three with the nerve to try it, unless you count Jägers, and he's almost fast enough that you don't have to pretend he caught you off guard. 'Thank you for worrying about me. Even if you do it too much.'

* * *

The Baron approaches you before you think of how to approach him and he tells you, 'It would be best if you stay away from her.'

'She's _mine_,' you say, because in all this it's the only thing you're sure of (your King, your Creator, Lucrezia, everyone who had a hold on you has made her yours).

He puts a hand on your shoulder, fearless and so very gentle, like you are the one who could break (when there's steel beneath your skin and in your bones, and muscles like a Jäger's). 'What would you do with her? You aren't capable of hurting her and she is very well protected here without you.'

'I could guard people from her,' you say.

'She's watched, too. I really don't think she will attack anyone, but I do have ways of dealing with it if she does. I'm afraid you will frighten her, and that's counterproductive right now.'

You hiss. She should be frightened of you.

His eyebrows draw together a little, and his voice when he speaks again is wry. 'Even if she's not frightened, I'm not sure she will be rational about you.'

You want to say you don't care, that she is yours anyway. But if she kills you (if she wouldn't kill anyone else, if this wouldn't be dying to protect someone but only a grudge against you) then no one would be left who knows who she is, or what she is, or what they have to fear. You have to protect them. 'If I stay away will you keep her away from Master Gilgamesh?'

He looks a little pained at that, and you know he wants to protect his son. That is why he came to you and talked quietly until you understood that there was a child for you to take care of, even if he was the wrong one. (He was never the wrong one, just not the one Lucrezia had in mind. You think she might have told you to protect her son just to torment you when you failed.) 'I don't think there is a practical way to do that while she remains aboard,' he says, 'although I _am_ trying to get her to Mechanicsburg.'

Mechanicsburg. It's where she belongs, the Heterodyne Girl (in the grave beneath it is where she belongs), but it's also a place of power for her. Before it would have been better for her to have stayed there and never troubled your Master (you saw that she did, in the end) but when it is a place of Heterodyne strength, when it is a place the Baron currently _has_. 'You would give her that much power.' You twist, digging your claws into his sleeve, but not his arm. 'And what then?' What treaty, what agreement, what words to twist to her advantage and follow only when it suits her?

'There are threats to the Empire,' he says, carefully. He's studying you, still unafraid but there is something he isn't saying. 'Ones that Mechanicsburg, by long custom, finds revolting. I believe she can secure it against them.'

He means the wasps, you know, you've seen how the Jägermonsters react to them. But she is her mother's child, too, (and you almost feel sorry for the Jägers, who love so deeply and so misguidedly, but unlike yours their loyalty was a choice) and cannot be trusted even in that. 'She is Lucrezia's.' That you can say. 'Do not rely on _her_ to be too disgusted to use them when she wills.' And she is subtler than Lucrezia, can take a country apart without the use of rocks and mayhem.

'She is,' he says. 'But she is also Bill's. And-' A sigh, and shadows in grey eyes. 'Neither of them raised her. But Judy and Punch are among the best people I have ever known.'

You pull back, chilled. 'They were only caretakers. They could not be expected to influence her.'

He blinks, as if you've said something that doesn't make sense to him. 'I don't think they could have _avoided_ it.'

'They could not have changed her nature.'

'No, but the evidence suggests that upbringing does make a considerable difference.' You are fairly sure he's trying to be encouraging. On the other hand, this was part of the theory behind the school, and now all the students are gone. He sighs and gazes over your head for a moment, even though you know there is nothing very interesting about the wall. And that is another thing you don't like about this body. It's too short all over. 'She does not always act wisely, but I believe her impulses are basically to protect.'

'No.' Her impulses are not to protect, _your_ impulses are to protect, and you have nothing in common with her, with any of her, she is _lying_ and she will _destroy Europa_ and you cared about that once, so much, before, back when you believed you could do something about it. Now you're not sure you care, if she could destroy Europa without destroying your Baron and your boy, the only people who were kind to you, really, who tried to understand even not knowing most of who/what you are. But the Baron's impulses are to protect and he'll die before he lets the Empire die. 'Don't let her do this.' Not an order, not quite pleading, but he can and you can't.

He gives you a long look. 'I cannot reliably keep her a secret from the Jägers,' he says. 'I could begin a war now, over a young woman who has not broken the peace, in the face of enemies waiting to take advantage of any weakness - and it would almost certainly come to that, if I moved against her. I could let her go, but I think she would be drawn to Mechanicsburg. Or I can help her there, and count on her as an ally.'

You don't say that you can handle the Jägers because you can't, really, not all of them (they humour you, a little, because while you're stronger and faster than any one of them, they still let you push them around because they like it and only because of that). You do say, 'You cannot count on her as an ally no matter what you do. Anything you give her will be used against you.'

He starts to speak, then pauses and looks at you and asks seriously, 'What has she done that you think that?'

'It is what she has always done.' The specifics - it's so hard to say, when Lucrezia's commands tighten around your throat like a noose. You cannot tell your own nature, so you cannot say you knew her two hundred years ago. He would not believe it, anyway. 'It is what Heterodynes have always done.' No, you know after saying it that was the wrong thing to say. Because, not the ones he knew (although you barely knew them, they were never there).

And, 'No,' he says, stepping back from you just a little with a wistful smile, and you lose hope because you were made to predict people and you know what he'll say. 'For centuries, yes. But not always.'

* * *

There is a treaty and you don't know what to think, because this isn't history repeating itself so much as inverting itself. Mechanicsburg leaves the Pax due to her winning the trust of the Baron. Forget the past (as if you can) it means she has power, regardless of comparisons to what happened then. You do not like it, do not like what she will do with it, especially when there is talk of sending her the wasp-eaters to protect. (Her _voice_, you feel it like a garotte not yet tightened, if she pitched it a touch higher, a touch angrier, and they give her the only things that could fight her using this to control Europa. To protect.)

You try again to talk to the Baron but now he is committed he is not interested in hearing your misgivings at all. You obey his orders to remain outside the school, but you prowl after her when she leaves it, out of her sight. The Jägers scent you, but they do not give you away, and her bodyguard, the Baron's lost daughter (your girl?) looks puzzled and tips her head back as if she might have scented you (or heard you, perhaps more likely, although you move silent as a cat) too.

Then they are gone, to Mechanicsburg, and at least they leave your boy behind, safe in his laboratory for now. You stand on a balcony, look down at the shattered Castle, watch and wait and wonder.

You half expect the first sign to be the Doom Bell. You remember the hollow anguish of hearing it for the first and only time after Lucrezia changed you. You think it would fell the pilots, here when Castle Wulfenbach is too close to flee.

Instead the Torchmen come. And they don't attack. They don't try to touch their flames to the dirigible. They hold out a lamp-post to you and say in the Castle's voice, 'Ah, _there_ you are. Come home.'

You were not unfeeling in your own body, nor unconflicted, but it was easier to separate and define the contradictions, even if it didn't help. Emotion feels so much messier now. You can name outrage (how dare the Castle claim to be a home for you) and a confusing fondness (that it would want to be) but the important part is that you are supposed to be with her, and you are not.

You grip the post and they fly down from the balcony on the Castle above to another on the Castle below.

Castle Heterodyne is suspiciously helpful. You are not quite sure you believe it when it directs you toward the Heterodyne Girl - _toward_, not _to_, because she has entered an area it cannot see. But it's telling the truth; first it stops answering you, and then you hear the drone of her voice humming. Your heart begins to beat faster when you see her working alone, shutting out the world.

You take her so easily. Splayed hand on her chest, pushing her back against the wall, other hand reaching for a rag before she can command you (before she can _try_, you're working on resisting, but no need to test yourself here). You need both hands to tie the gag, hold her in place with your foot instead while she claws furiously at your thighs, nails slipping on the leather.

Then you lift her, one hand under her shoulders, one under her legs, claws not even touching her. You tip her against your body so her arms are pinned against your chest. She tries to kick, tries to punch, tries to claw, chews at her gag and tries to shriek insults from under it in turn. By then you're already halfway through the dead area (you jump a trap, casually kick an impaling spear out of the way, and she goes quiet for a brief moment) towards the wall you know will open at the right touch. (Lucrezia brought you up through the passage, you explored it later, all its entrances, a place the Castle cannot see).

As you go you pull things off her, shifting her for a moment to tug away a weapon, a power source, a tool, and dropping it, then shifting her back effortlessly even as she tenses to try and run. Once she realises she can't she uses a brief moment of freedom to attack instead, driving fingers at your eyes. You catch her fingers in your mouth, tasting of machine oil and sweat, and hold them between the sharp tips of your teeth without breaking the skin. Fear flares in her eyes and you watch in surprise (that it took this long for fear to be more visible than outrage, that it's _this_ that scares her not being dragged away to some unknown place.) You push open the wall with your free hand and step into the passage.

She snatches her hand away as soon as you let her and immediately curls it into a fist, but instead of striking at you again she pulls it back protectively against her chest and twists. It's even less effective than her previous efforts and you realise this is because for once she's not actually trying to _escape_, she's trying to see where you're going. You make her face you again, and she tries to look over your shoulder. She's still growling at you around the gag, and trying to chew on it.

The passageway is a long spiraling one, an old one, that even the Heterodynes seem to have forgotten and the Castle (as you understand it) never knew. It goes deep, beneath where the Castle's senses stop, and it goes to the Crypt where the only way to speak to the Castle is to have it punch its way into the Seneschal's brain. You saw this many times, when you watched by the grave.

The grave is still there, in the corner, a tomb like a stone box carved elaborately with trees and flowers, yews and tender, drooping lilies. If you look at them long enough you can see snakes, dragons and spiders in their curves and you were never sure if that was Mechanicsburg's art or the madness of your long solitude. You put her down, now, beside it, shifting one hand to hold her throat, scraping warning claws against the back of her neck. 'Don't move.' You use the other hand to push the lid back.

She doesn't listen, but you expected that. She grabs at your arm, but she isn't strong enough to move you. She makes a choked noise and you let up, slightly, because you do not intend to strangle her; she swings her legs around and tries to kick you, and you shove the lid a little farther than you intended so that it slides off the box entirely and hits the floor with a bang. She flinches.

You lift her up as she claws at you and thrust her back in her tomb, on top of old fragile bones and rotted pink silk. She starts to roll over to get up, and green eyes meet the empty skull and widen. You hurry to lift the heavy stone lid, and she looks up and screams through the gag as its shadow falls over her.

When the grave is closed, you lean on it, breathing hard, and listen to the dull thump of boots and fists from inside until they still.

Without thinking you take two measured steps around the tomb to where you stood before. You cannot set your feet in their places, your skirt binds and your stance is no longer as wide in this shorter body. You think this is as it should be, she is safe now, you will guard her better this time. You swallow, throat a little dry with exertion, and think you will need to drink. You will need to eat. You will need to _sleep_.

You are starting to shake, little tremors in your hands. She will get out again because this is the wrong body to guard her with. Because you are weak. Because you did not think this through. (And deep, deep, a tug in your spine that says _you cannot harm her_ that says _you have harmed her_. But she is whole and safe and she can't hurt anyone now.)

'A long time ago,' you touch the top of the tomb, almost tenderly, she was never more yours than now, 'My Creator told me to keep you safe. He meant me to make you safe for those around you, for all of Europa.' Your hand strokes over the raised designs, claws rasping. 'Hush. You can't hurt anyone now.'

There is no noise from inside the tomb, perhaps she has accepted this and returned to the death she should not have risen from. You settle back into place, feet solid on the ancient dust of the floor, and wait, guarding ceaselessly as long as you can manage before this body betrays you once again.

She lies quiet. There is almost-silence, and almost-peace. It is not strange that to find peace in Mechanicsburg you must go where the Heterodynes lie dead.

You breathe dry air and think _she needs water and air too_ and ruthlessly lay over it the thought _the Heterodyne Girl has been dead a long time_.

Your sense of time is not what it was, but you can hear your watch ticking at the edge of hearing. Seconds pass. Your heartbeat does not slow. You wish it would. Minutes...

Thunder cracks from inside the tomb. The ornately carved lid splits right across and flies off; one piece nearly strikes you and you flinch back because it would be enough to incapacitate you. _She_ lies there with one arm over her face and the other hand upraised and red. She sits up and scrambles up, hauling herself out of the box, and she's _out_ again when you were right there. She turns to look around, and when she sees you she freezes, face mirroring your horror.

She takes a step back, hands coming up. Her eyes dart around the room and then settle on you. There are slits in her clothing with blood welling up where chips of stone struck her, there are bits of bone and pink thread in her hair, and her skin is bruised. Her voice when she speaks is rough and too loud. 'What the _hell_ are you trying to do?'

You grab her wrists, blood from cuts smearing your gloves, and immediately loosen your grip. Encircling her wrists close enough between your fingers her hands won't slip out but barely touching them. 'You are dead. You should stay in your tomb. You did enough damage, must you return to do it again?' You sound almost as much imploring as furious - you are scared of her. Not because she could hurt you but because you cannot _stop_ her. Everything that you should be (every warped and poorly thought out thing you have become) is tied to her and she is proof that you cannot succeed.

She stares at you. Whether it's futility or curiosity, she doesn't try to jerk away this time. 'What... are you _talking_ about?'

'My Master told me to keep you safe. My Creator told me the same, but he meant safe for others.' You told her this, you think. Maybe she didn't hear. Or maybe you only thought you did, your mind ceaselessly chewing over the old orders binding it so harshly. 'I thought I could do both by killing you and guarding your tomb. But you did not _stay_. When your mother - may her bones burn green - pulled me away and took away any ability to harm you, you took the opportunity to crawl from your grave to torment Europa again.'

'Uh...' She tugs gingerly. You tighten your grip just enough to hold her wrists still. She curls three fingers and tilts her hand to point approximately toward the tomb. 'Exactly who do you think I am?'

'The Heterodyne Girl.' The label they had used for her, the label that applies to this one now. But she means the name. 'Euphrosynia.'

She swallows. Her eyes don't leave yours. 'I'm Agatha,' she says, carefully. 'I'm not dead, and I wasn't around two hundred years ago. If that's Euphrosynia's tomb, I'm pretty sure she's still in it.' Something falls from her hair and clicks against the stone, and you feel her shudder. 'Mostly.'

'You are the Heterodyne Girl.' That is clear when nothing else is. You know she is the Heterodyne Girl. You know you have orders about her. 'You _should_ be dead.' Half fact, half malice (you _want_ her dead, because she betrayed your King, because her mother did this to you, because love of her made your King take you from your sisters). You don't move. She should be dead, but you don't think you can kill her again.

'I am not two hundred years old,' she says, distinctly and with irritation. 'For that matter, I didn't think _you_ were.' Her eyes narrow. Anger, thought. '_Why_ should I be dead?'

'You betrayed my King, you were a danger to Europa.' The old words come easily. Your answer (your excuse) to the competing orders and your choice of how to fulfil them. What else could you do, given that?

'I. Am not. Euphrosynia. I've never even _met_ a king.' She pulls against your grip again. 'I know there haven't been a lot of Heterodyne Girls but can you seriously not tell the difference?'

'My orders relate to the Heterodyne Girl.' You don't know why you're trying to _explain_, as if she might submit if she understood. Maybe it's loneliness, there's never been anyone you could tell before. (Maybe it's a distraction, because her words echo strangely, and when you try to understand, to think that she might be right, something starts to unravel in your brain.)

'I guess that's a no,' she mutters, then tries again. 'Look, if you can distinguish two meanings of safe, why can't you identify me as a separate person? I realise I'm still "the Heterodyne Girl" either way, but can we establish I'm not the same one?' She tugs... _toward_ the tomb. You let her step that way, cautiously, following. 'See? I'm pretty sure that one was, ah, unsalvageably dead since before my mother was _born_.'

The skeleton is still there, disturbed now so that the bones lie crooked from one another, but you can read in them her height (taller than she is now, by a little...taller than...) and her delicate bone structure. The rags of the pink dress she was buried in. You let go of one wrist and reach down to touch, as if your eyes alone cannot be trusted, feeling bone smooth as ivory under your skin, crumbling slightly to leave powder on your fingers. But it hurts...if she is and is not...and you still... 'My orders apply to the Heterodyne Girl.' Your voice is flat, strange, as if you've forgotten how to speak in this body, slurring slightly at the edges. You close your free hand around her wrist again. 'If you are not the right Heterodyne Girl...then I am sorry.' Because she is still dangerous. And still your problem.

She looks at you warily. 'Why? Are you planning to kill me some other way than shutting me in a tomb until I suffocate now?'

'I.' You _should_. She is still dangerous. She is her mother's daughter, and a Heterodyne. 'I cannot.' You are shaking now, adrift. It hurts (as it hurt then until you found the narrow road between incompatible orders) and you cannot think. You want your sisters, even if they would not know what to do either, they would understand.

She squints at you and then apparently decides to believe, or at least, not to argue. 'You,' she mutters, 'have apparently been given the _weirdest_ orders ever.' She sits down on the edge of the open tomb, and you let her. 'Surely you weren't living in the Heterodyne Crypt for two hundred years. Why does everybody think Lucrezia made you?'

'I was.' At first they just thought it some strange whim of your King's to send you, later you think they forgot you weren't a statue. You saw no reason to remind them. 'And I cannot say.' Because Lucrezia's consciousness transferring devices are, curse her, a secret she has forced you to keep. 'But I was different then.'

'She... changed you somehow.' Still watching you. 'At least you're not mixing me up with _her_.' She looks abruptly worried. 'You're not, are you?'

'No. I know you are not her.' You are starting to wonder who she _is_. Your hands shake, trembling against her wrists. If she commanded you you wonder whether you could resist - you think you could, but she has not tried.

'Okay. That's good. That was... a problem, last time I ran into somebody she'd messed with.' She bites her lip. 'Look, are you okay?'

You laugh. Strange and hissing and gurgling, catching at your lungs and throat. When you speak it is a low, furious hiss. 'This body. I can feel it moving, my pulse is faster, I can feel it pumping things into my blood. Pain I have learnt to endure - _everything_ I have learnt to endure, when every breath is alien and wrong. And you...you _care?_'

She shuts her eyes and inhales sharply, clenches her jaw and huffs the breath out through her nose. 'You... you are just about the _last_ person I want to care about. I saw you kill my parents. Adam and Lilith. You tore them to pieces. But I-' She stops and swallows hard. 'They're going to be all right and... I'm not sure she's the only one, but it sounds like Lucrezia did something to mess you up.'

You let go of her and step back, leaving her sitting on the edge of the broken tomb. Everything is still around you, inside your heart is beating against your ribs, blood pounding in your ears. 'Come with me.' You cannot tell her, you do not think you can resist that order yet, but...you are so close. You can walk there. She can follow. And if your body is there...

She looks confused, and you turn your back on her and start walking. After a few seconds you hear her footsteps behind you. You do not look. You can go there. You are not forbidden to go there, not at the deepest level. It would have been too much of a contradiction, to build in a compulsion never to go where this body was made.

The laboratory is as it always was. A dusty tea set still containing the dregs of tea sits on a small table and you grin. Lucrezia did not intend to blow up Castle Heterodyne, at least while she was still inside it. Your body lies on a slab, at first it looks simply empty, as if having moved you out of it she had no further need of it. But there are chains, welded to your wrists and ankles, running to the legs of the slab. You reach out, mournfully touch the ragged fabric of a wing (useless frivolity - you could never fly, and for one who was meant to teach fighting what sense did it make to have two weights on your back changing your posture? But you were beautiful). You cannot tell if your body has someone in it, or whether it is deactivated or simply still. You know only that it does not have you in it.

You hear the girl behind you draw in a sharp breath, and she comes into the laboratory and circles around to stare at the slab. 'You were a _Muse_.' She sounds stunned.

'I could be again.' You are afraid, you feel the dryness of it in your mouth, the sharpness of it in your guts. It takes you a moment to realise why, when emotion seems to come as a physical thing before a mental one. But she has no reason to care. And the worst thing she could do to you now would be to walk away and leave you again unable to tell anyone who might help.

She looks at you sharply and then does walk away and - no, not away, only over to the desk to come back with one of Lucrezia's notebooks. 'Don't climb on the other slab or anything right away,' she says, which is not a useful order to try to resist because you hadn't been considering that, and anyway, her voice is not so much commanding as mumbling. 'I'm not familiar with this equipment and some of it looks fried.'

'My body may be inhabited.' You don't want to stop her - you don't know if this is her being strangely kind, or the reaction of a Spark faced with an interesting problem, but either way you want her to follow through. And if it's the latter (as seems more likely) then interrupting her thought process long enough for her to realise she's helping you might be the worst thing you could do. But...if someone is in there, then whatever she's planning on doing, she should know. You don't want her to erase them never knowing they were there.

She looks up from comparing a diagram in the notebook to the equipment near the head of the slab. 'Yes, apparently there's a... fragment or copy of the Castle in there. I'm not really clear on _why_. It's not happy about it, either. She ended up knocking it out with a transharmonic pulse... I think I can bring it back up with another one.' She perches on the edge of the slab, eyebrows drawn together, and shuts the notebook with a snap. 'This is a mess,' she says bluntly. 'I think I can basically follow what she was doing with the transfer, but some of the connections have melted and more of them corroded in the meantime. Inhabited or not, I wouldn't try to move you back with this unless you were dying.'

You nod and wonder if she plans to go and find more equipment - if she plans to do this alone or tell the Baron. You're not sure your ability to let her do this extends to suggesting she bring other people here. So you wait, and do not ask, standing guard over your own body as you did for so long over Euphrosynia's tomb, as if someone might snatch it away from you now.

She gives you a wary look and taps the spine of the notebook against her hand. 'The other thing is, once Castle Heterodyne - or at least the piece of it with the Chapel - recognised me as the Heterodyne, it was supposed to let the Baron and the Jägers in. And Zeetha. They're going to get worried if they don't hear anything. I think we should all go up and probably get the Baron to have a look at this...' She frowns and mutters, 'I just hope _he_ doesn't start whisking people's minds off into the wrong brains.'

She picks up a conical device and aims the larger end at your body. There is no sound, only a feeling of pressure, and then the eyes open. She comes over to it and says, 'I know you have no way to verify this right now, but I'm Agatha Heterodyne and I-_glk_!'

The device clatters to the floor.

The Castle in your body has snapped its chains and sat up, and it holds the Heterodyne Girl by the throat just as you once did, before you dashed her skull against the wall.

For a moment you almost let it, because that's _you_ and this is the Heterodyne Girl and this is as it should be. But your body moves without you and, for the first time (and feeling sickened by it) you are thankful for Lucrezia's bonds. You throw yourself between them, wrap yourself around its arm to weigh it down. You don't know which of you could fight better, now. You don't even know if you could fight better for being in the right body, if this was reversed (you've learnt a lot in this one, about fights that are not on a stage, about guts tangled around your claws and messy ways to get the other person _dead_). You hope its time as a Castle won't have it accustomed to a body like yours, but you don't doubt for its instinct as a killer.

'No. Mine,' you hiss, then, forcing yourself to coherency, even as you try to press your claws into its elbow joint. 'She is not Lucrezia. She is putting us back in the right bodies, and I want her allowed to _finish_.'

It doesn't release her, but it doesn't shock you both and it doesn't close its hand and crush her throat, either. Her face is red and her fingers scrabble at its wrist. 'It was Lucrezia's plan to bear a daughter of the House of Heterodyne and then replace her,' says the Castle in your voice. 'I cannot allow this.'

There's a thump, and it lifts your body's head in shock. You look around to see the girl on her feet, a piece from inside your wrist in one hand. She scoops up the dropped device and aims it. 'I am _not Lucrezia_. I am trying to repair you and stop her accomplices.' Her voice rises. 'I am Agatha Heterodyne, and I have had enough of being mistaken for people today! Cut it out!'

The Castle glowers at her. You let go of the arm and watch them both warily. 'I will speak to the Lord Heterodyne,' the Castle announces menacingly.

The girl huffs. 'I wish you _could_.'

'...his brother?' It sounds dismayed, and you know it's not asking this as a threat. A daughter would have precedence over a brother. It wants to know how many Heterodynes it lost while it was asleep.

She winces. 'I haven't seen him for eleven years. He left me with Ad- with Punch and Judy. He sent us a letter from here, before he dropped out of touch completely, but nobody seems to remember running into him.'

It flinches at that. You're not sure you knew you could flinch in that body. Then it draws itself up and says, 'Then I will speak to the rest of myself.'

The Heterodyne Girl rolls her eyes and gestures toward the door. '_That's_ what I was about to suggest when you started strangling me. Come on upstairs, then.'

Getting upstairs is complicated a little by mutual suspicion, but eventually with a contemptuous glance the Castle stalks ahead. The Heterodyne Girl looks sideways at you. 'Thank you,' she says quietly. 'And, ah, sorry.' She holds up the bit she took out of your body's wrist. 'I'll put it back.'

You huff slightly, but you do believe her. Surprisingly.

The three of you nearly collide with the Baron and his daughter and several worried Jägers on the way out. The Castle in your body and the search party ask questions over each other until the girl shouts them all down and explains, mostly. She leaves out being put into the grave, but the Jägers frown when they smell her and you think maybe they know. They might have found you sooner, it turns out, except that the part of the Castle speaking to them didn't admit for some time that it couldn't actually find the Chapel.

You are silent, because for once almost everything you would like to say is already being said, and you are suddenly very tired. This, too, is a strange feature of these messy biological bodies. Feeling too much makes them weary. You lean against a wall and the broken Castle, with no idea what you were doing, comments happily that you found her.

The Baron notices, because he does that and he's observing the discussion more than participating at that point. He steps in to try to send you back to his own Castle. You refuse. Eventually he swears not to let the girl destroy Europa while you sleep, and you are fairly sure he's humouring you but you have not truly rested for several nights and you finally let him and the Castle put you to bed.

You jolt awake to the sound of Heterodyne droning with all your nerves on edge, sure something terrible has happened. You sit up and find the bedroom converted to a laboratory. Light spills from lamps and creeps in through a badly shuttered window. Your body lies on another bed beside you with the cobwebs cleaned away and the welded chains removed. It is gowned in water-grey silk and your hair has been combed.

Your predictive abilities may be malfunctioning. You are not very upset about this.

The Baron clears his throat from your other side. 'We have suffered no serious crises since you went to sleep.' A brief pause. 'Actually, we've had fewer explosions than I would normally expect.'

The girl stops humming to say, 'That's because you keep putting blast shields everywhere!'

'Those contain the damage in the event of an explosion; they do not actually prevent them!' The Baron clears his throat and turns back to you. 'I beg your pardon. We're nearly ready.' You rather suspect they were ready a few times before, but started tinkering again instead of simply waking you up. The Baron is a comparatively practical Spark, but that doesn't take much.

'I will wait.' You do, although you watch them like a hawk. You will not be able to tell from the equipment when it is ready, but if their body language starts to suggest they are ready and merely poking things you are ready to stomp on any more tangents. Your body lies next to you, cool and efficient metal, and the swirling impatience that is, for inexplicable biological reasons, taking up residence in your gut is a measure of how close you are to regaining it.

You don't have to wait long. They go over the connections one last time, scrupulously, which is a precaution you can't argue with. The girl stands back while the Baron settles a glass-and-metal cap over your head, which is probably just as well because the sensory impressions are suddenly familiar and your pulse jumps and you almost, almost panic but he has never given you any reason not to trust him. Never. Your claws puncture the mattress beneath you but you lie still.

They start throwing switches. Lightning slams into you and it feels as if all your nerves fire at once, although you are almost sure that isn't actually possible. Your vision doubles and you seem to be in two places, and then one set of senses begins to fade.

Your sense of smell goes first, the sense of taste that only told you the inside of your mouth tasted of dust and oil following. It is blissful relief to be rid of them (their relentless pushing of overwhelmingly physical information). Stranger to lose your sense of touch (you have that in both bodies, but it is different enough the neural synchronisation can't account for it, pressure plates and not nerves). The little pains, hunger, thirst, bruises, fade and leave you floating in a blissful haze. It is like being let out of a cage.

It takes you a few seconds to realise it's really all over. You are on the other bed. There is no churning... chemistry. No pulse. No pain. Only clockwork and tame lightning and you sit up and look at shining white-and-gold metal hands and grey silk sleeves. You are yourself and whole again.

'Is your wrist all right?' The girl is not quite hovering, in fact she's not quite within reach, but she's on her toes as if she wants to be. 'I realise everybody says you're nearly impossible to repair, but I think it's back in place and if it isn't I can-'

'It's fine.' She stops talking. You turn your hands and test the joint, close them and feel that the strength is not compromised. You slide off the bed and stand up to your full height for the first time in years. You go around the laboratory equipment and open the window and push against the broken shutters. One snaps off; it stops falling in midair, three meters below. Afternoon sunlight pours in and you spread your tattered wings to it and let the bared metal send reflections lancing out across the town. 'It's fine,' you say again. 'Thank you, Agatha.'


End file.
